


The Tale of an Enduring Bridge

by CannibalisticDuck



Category: Frozen (Disney Movies)
Genre: Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Tags May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-03
Updated: 2019-12-03
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:21:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21655162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CannibalisticDuck/pseuds/CannibalisticDuck
Summary: The bridge between the spirits and the people of the fjord is fragile, yet enduring.  Through the ages, the link has shifted and crumbled.  It has been severed; it has been repaired; and it has been strengthened in an unending cycle of greed, pride, compassion and redemption.Queen Elsa’s reign over Arendelle was no exception.
Kudos: 3





	The Tale of an Enduring Bridge

**Author's Note:**

> Any Mary Shelley stans in the crowd, tonight? lol

Captain Robert Walton slumped at his desk chair within his ship’s private chambers. Leaning forward, he reexamined his spiky script, which spilled across three parchment pages. He groaned with frustration.

He hardly set aside the time to write his eldest sister in London, and he knew he only worried her more when she received winding, nonsensical streams of consciousness detailing the recent happenings aboard his ship. With his time stretched so thin as he adjusted the ship’s course, monitored the crew’s morale and negotiated food rationing with his surly cook, Robert couldn’t improve the quality of his correspondences. Every letter, no matter his intentions, was feverishly written by candlelight well beyond the witching hours. It simply couldn’t be helped.

Pressing his fingers to the bridge of his nose, he exhaled deeply and willed himself to rise from his chair. Mentally, he prepared himself to extinguish the candlelight. As he extended his hand to the dwindling candle, he paused.

Footsteps rumbled above him. In his tired daze, he nearly brushed it off as the dull thundering hooves of his uncle’s prize horses. Remembering that his uncle’s pastures were leagues away from his gently rocking ship, Robert shot up from his chair to investigate.

At this hour, hardly any crew should have been awake. Only the select few saddled with this fortnight’s night watch should have been halfheartedly patrolling above deck.

Robert stumbled out of his quarters and felt blindly for the rickety banister. As he felt along the wall, an errant splinter of wood pierced his fingertip. With a huff, he finally found the stairway and climbed above deck.

Cursing at the late hour and the pain in his finger, Robert’s gaze swept mutinously around the deck. He found his crew crowded together on the portside of the deck.

Mustering his tired frustration, Robert growled loudly, “I hope you all are enjoying your gander at the stars.” Then he shouted, “Perhaps, next time, you could all _tiptoe_ around the _deck_ without your _REINFORCED BOOTS_?”

To his surprise, Robert’s crew didn’t acknowledge him. The remained crowded at the rail, jostling for position. One crewman, Seamus, leapt atop another crewman’s cloaked shoulders.

“Shall I repeat myself, you dirty bastards?” Robert yelled. Seamus continued climbing to the rail alongside his bunkmates. Shouldn’t those men be asleep? Were they—were they amassing a mutiny?

Robert squeaked, “Gentlemen?”

His men’s fronts remained plastered to the rails of the deck. Robert laughed nervously.

“Look, men, I understand that we’ve been at sea a bit longer than we’d expected. I promise that we’ll dock at the nearest port tomorrow morning. I—” Seeing that his crew continued to ignore him, Robert continued, “I’ll buy each of you a flagon of Arendelle’s best ale! We’ll be home to England before you’ve emptied—"

The night sky flashed above him with a brilliant apparition, and Robert paused. He realized he’d been a fool to fear his crew’s ire.

The fabled Northern Lights undulated across the constellations. Its ribbons spanned the entirety of the sky; it was seemingly centered above the ship.

His crew shouted excitedly, shifting their gazes from the portside to the sky. Tearing his attention from the heavens, Robert darted between his crew members to the rail and promptly lost his breath.

The water beneath them was unnaturally still. In all directions, the shimmering black water reflected the Northern Lights as clearly as the finest mirrors of a merchant’s auction outside the Queen’s palace.

Above him, the lights suddenly stopped shifting, like windless sails. For an eerie moment, the world seemed to stop turning. Robert’s vision was filled with the twin northern streamers: one burning brightly in the sky and the other setting the ocean aflame.

Scanning the horizon, Robert marveled at his own blindness. Of course, his men weren’t watching the still water; their attention was stolen by the enormous glacier nearly twenty ship-lengths away from the rail.

It rose from the ocean as an enormous spire and bridged the two worlds together. Soundlessly, the Northern Lights sprang back into motion. Centering at each end of the glacial spire, the lights began to pinwheel counterclockwise, gaining momentum with each rotation. They gained a dizzying speed, and the neon colors began to blur into an icy blue.

Without fanfare, the blue light coalesced at each end of the spire into barely contained spheres of energy. In one terrible moment, the twin stars hovered hesitantly above each spire end. They began to sink in a rapid free fall.

As they touched each sharpened end, the blue energy dissipated, and the glacier glowed the same cobalt blue.

A haunting siren’s song echoed across the fjord, and the strange spell was broken.

The stars resumed their posts, and the waves began to chop lazily, shattering its mirror effect. The crew’s excited chattering resumed.

All that remained of the night’s strange events was the glacial spire, which continued to glow with a subdued blue light. Stunned, Robert stared at the glacier as its interior continued to weakly glow. Now, it simply reflected the pale light of the moon suspended in the sky.

Robert paused, waiting for some other phenomenon to materialize. He milled around the deck for an hour with his crew members.

When it became clear that the ocean and the sky wouldn’t roar back to life, he bade his crew goodnight, and Robert dashed below deck to his quarters. Reinvigorated, he added a postscript to his sister’s letter.

> _Margaret, excuse this addendum, but I can hardly contain my awe at the sublime beauty which I have encountered above deck. After a decade of dormancy, God has once more unleashed the vibrant northern streamers. The circumstances were quite auspicious, and I am inclined to believe that they appeared as an omen. My mind is racing with the possibilities of what this could foreshadow._
> 
> _Should I be so egoistic as to believe that God has reacquainted the night sky with this phenomenon to celebrate my decision to journey home? Or, my dear sister, could I have merely been a happy witness to the birth of a new era?_
> 
> _I can hardly sleep for the theories traded excitedly between my crew, whose voices continue to rise between the cracks of my floorboards. With as sharp a mind as yours, I expect that you will have a host of your own theories by the time I dock in England._

_Your brother,_

_R. Walton_

**Author's Note:**

> Just watched Frozen II, and I’ve got IDEAS about how it could’ve gone. I haven’t had a chance to edit, so if anyone wants to tell me where I made a mistake, feel free.
> 
> I'm hoping to stick with a timeline of weekly updates. If I'm not sticking to it, please spam me.


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